Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Unanswered question

An SBNation article, published on October 25, references an October 24 Reddit "conversation" with an "anonymous NHL executive" who suggests that Columbus' John P. McConnell (referenced on Reddit as "McConnell," along with "Snider [Philadelphia], Jacobs [Boston], Leipold [Minnesota]") is on the NHL's four-man negotiating committee.

While I am skeptical of message boards' journalistic worth as a matter of practice and am even more skeptical of self-professed anonymous insiders and experts (Hi, HockeyyInsiderr), apparently SBNation's editors felt the assertion was solid enough to allow their writer to post it.

But is this true? Is McConnell on the NHL negotiating team?

With so little of substance to write about as the lockout drags on, one would think that a Blue Jackets/NHL-credentialed journalist (of which I am not one - at least as I type) would bother to fact-check this nugget. It's only been out there for nearly three weeks.

This Blue Jackets fan would like to know.

UPDATE: The New York Post's Larry Brooks lists the owners' negotiating committee as consisting of "the Bruins’ Jeremy Jacobs, the Capitals’ Ted Leonsis, the Flames’ Murray Edwards and the Wild’s Craig Leipold". So the Reddit guy was 50 percent right.

In light of this apparent statement of fact from a credentialed NHL reporter, I can't help but wonder why the Blue Jackets didn't openly deny the Reddit guy's claim that McConnell was involved...and why a Blue Jackets-centric reporter didn't force the issue.